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Crowding out in the sense of preventing the private sector from using resources would only happen hand in hand with inflation, which an earlier commenter alread
by atq2119 7y ago
Crowding out in the sense of preventing the private sector from using resources would only happen hand in hand with inflation, which an earlier commenter already identified as the real limit of deficits.
Crowding out in the traditional sense of discouraging the private sector from investment is really a function of interest rates. For a government that runs its own, free-floating currency, interest rates are a policy variable independent from deficit and debt.
That even competent monetary policy cannot be relied on to make the household analogy work was proven empirically beyond any reasonable doubt via the famous "zero lower bound".
There is also the question of whether monetary policy should even try to make the household analogy hold. This is ultimately a political question, and especially in a democracy there a good reasons why it shouldn't.
- eru 7y ago> That even competent monetary policy cannot be relied on to make the household analogy work was proven empirically beyond any reasonable doubt via the famous "zero lower bound". The zero lower bond is not a problem. You can still do unlimited QE, independent of interest rates. Or you can do what Singapore does and not use interest rates as a policy instrument at all (they use foreign exchange rates; the US could use eg a basket of commodity prices, if they wanted to).